Vulcan Spock’s planet isn’t even a planet ● What came first, the Sun or the water? ● The oldest murder in the world identified in France. indeed?

Spock’s volcano planet isn’t even a planet

When talking about the famous character Spock from the series “Star Trek” and, implicitly, about his planet called Vulcan, most people would think that this is a fictional world created specifically for the science fiction universe. It does not.

The creators of the original Star Trek series mentioned that the planet Vulcan revolves around a star called 40 Eridani A.

And this star does exist, and it is about 16.3 light years from our Sun. In 2018, a solid planet orbiting a star was discovered. And that was reason enough for fans of the Star Trek franchise to demand that her name officially become Vulcan.

It was not called that, but 40 Eri b, to the disappointment of most. And since bad news never comes by itself, this planet doesn’t even exist. It was an error in calculations, which experts corrected three years later.

Apparently, astronomers were misled (it still happens) by what appeared to be a distortion of the star’s light spectrum caused by the planet’s gravity.

However, there were suspicions from the very beginning. But only now, after a more detailed analysis, it was possible to conclude that it was actually about the activity on the surface of the star 40 Eridani A, and not about the gravity of another celestial body.

This time it was not to be. But if you’ve watched Star Trek, you know that the Vulcans (our first alien allies) found us, not us. Therefore, we must be patient.

What came first – the Sun or the water?

About the principle of the origin of the egg and the chicken, an international group of astrophysicists from the United States, the Netherlands, Japan, Taiwan and Sweden recently signed an article in the journal Nature, announcing that they have finally found an answer to the question related to the appearance of water. In particular, did it appear before the Sun or not?

Studying the protostar in the constellation Orion, V883 Orionis as it is called, the cited researchers could see evidence of water in the circumstellar disk. In particular, they explain, they were looking for evidence of water transitioning from a solid (ice) to a gaseous state, traces that astronomers can detect.

In this case, the gaseous water cloud was far enough away from V388 Orionis to be observed. By comparing the composition of the water there with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope system in Chile, and then comparing it with the composition of comets and protoplanetary systems, the scientists were able to find that it is the same, and the water has the same concentration of hydrogen and deuterium. Practically, it remains relatively unchanged at all stages of the formation of the solar system.

And in this regard, we can say that we have also found an answer to the above question. More precisely, water first appeared.

The oldest murder in the world identified in France. indeed?

The French archaeological site of Cro-Magnon, famous for giving the name to our ancestors of the species Homo sapiens, may not yet have revealed all its secrets. And this despite the fact that excavations of archaeological material there began back in 1868 at the initiative of the great French geologist Louis Larte.

Recently, a team of French and Belgian researchers reportedly identified marks on one of the skulls discovered more than 150 years ago as showing signs of blunt force trauma. Most likely, it was a stone ax, say the mentioned researchers.

The question is quite delicate. That’s because the fossil in question (called “Cro-Magnon 2”) was glued together over time, making the wound identification process more difficult. The analyzes carried out with the help of a tomograph confirm, according to the authors of the study, the opinion about a craniocerebral injury. Others say that the wounds were inflicted after death, perhaps even in modern times.

And that brings us to another, similar case involving a prehistoric skull discovered during World War II in the Choklovina Cave in Romania. Then some outside researchers analyzed what they had analyzed of the skull and came to the same conclusion. Namely, it bears the marks of a serious injury that never heals, hence pre-historic premeditated murder.

Without forethought, because they did not expect this, the Romanian researchers showed them photographs of the skull in question, taken during its first analysis (performed by Francisco Reiner and Ion Simionescu), as well as others taken only a few decades earlier. And the skull was intact, without that dirty injury.

Therefore, when we see such news, it is nice to blow the yogurt, especially since those specialists from France and Belgium did not even publish a photo so that we could clarify what and how.

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